Scar Tissue
by Sassassin
Summary: A trench carves a definite border between the girl she used to be, in touch with her emotions but a little lost, and the woman she has turned into, broken by the things she has seen and the people she has lost. - AU/One-shot


**Tagging: **Nikita, Alex, Michael. (+ Owen, Birkhoff, Daniel, Emily, Sean.)  
**Ships: **Nalex, side of Mikita.  
**Rating:** T. (Mention of sex, but no explicit details.)

While not completely based on the song, it definitely served as inspiration and if you don't know it yet I suggest you give **Scar Tissue **by the **Red Hot Chili Peppers **a listen. Amazing song.

This one goes out to two people: **uptightcrankyshadownet**, aka Adey aka someone I've come to consider a friend with how often I tweet to her. And **Cory Monteith**. He has nothing to do with the content, whatsoever, but still. May you rest in peace, dear friend.

* * *

**Scar Tissue**, _noun_**  
**- Dense, fibrous connective tissue that forms over a healed wound or cut.  
- Lasting emotional scar caused by a trauma heavy enough to damage.

* * *

The desert sky is beautiful in the morning. Beautiful, but like Walt Disney on acid. Scraps of cloud alight as they bathe in sunlight that turns from soft and grey to inhumanly bright in a matter of minutes. Above a roughly serrated horizon line an explosion of color blows in every direction. Blue and pink and purple and yellow. God rinses his paint-brushes above Afghanistan.

She tries to remember that—when she kicks her sheets off of her to try and forget the heat, the rattling sounds of bullets flying, the fear that sits like a chokehold around her throat; she tries to remember the mornings instead.

She clings to the colors and the clouds when she becomes too aware of Michael's presence, wrapped around her too tight like a bullet proof vest.

Just like any soldier she knows bullet proof vests aren't _actually _bullet proof. She squeezes her eyes shut against the sight of Owen taking in a hit from an enemy soldier, hums to herself to get the sound of his scream and his fall out of her head.

She doesn't feel guilty when she sees her wedding band sit atop the sink, doesn't try to figure out how many days ago she took it off because there's no place for any of it. A trench carves a definite border between the girl she used to be, in touch with her emotions but a little lost, and the woman she has turned into, broken by the things she has seen and the people she has lost.

Nikita doesn't regret becoming a soldier. She doesn't regret doing two tours in Afghanistan, away from home and hubby. She regrets allowing it to change her, she regrets not fighting against the love she felt for her comrades—everything she had slipped through her fingers like desert sand, burning her tips and whirling up orange dust.

She goes about her morning routine without thinking: showers cold, applies a coat of make-up that grows in layers to accommodate the bags under her eyes growing more one sleepless night at a time, combs her hair into a ponytail, decides that today is not yet the day she puts her ring back on, goes downstairs to make and eat her veggie shake, brushes her teeth and then she's out the door.

She never stays at home long. No sky is the Afghan sky she craves but that doesn't mean she'll stop looking.

And Michael, had he been awake when she finally gave up trying to pretend sleep was a thing she could actually do, he would've given her his now familiar sarcastic remarks. Or worse, he would've told her it is okay not to be okay.

But it isn't. Not really.

People of her platoon made it back to the States in a body bag, uniform adorned with medals and ribbons that have lost all value for the dead and living alike.

It isn't okay for her not to be okay because aside from a few scars and a collar bone that will never feel truly okay again she hasn't collected any real damage. She hasn't _died_.

Michael doesn't understand and she doesn't blame him—_how _can he understand if he hasn't walked the thousand miles in her shoes that have broken her to bits, and it's not like he isn't trying the very best he can.

He just... he doesn't _get _it, and so by a stretch he doesn't get _her_.

That is what is ruining their marriage right now, what makes their former inside jokes lead into awkward silences, what cuts any and all attempts at intimacy short—somehow she can't find it within herself to care.

She drives her car up to Indianapolis, chasing after a sunrise that flirts with the entire spectrum of color she knows she won't find. But she does it day after day, again and again because if she stops trying then what?

The sun settles eventually, and forces her to stop driving. She lowers her speed but only because she needs to stay alive another day to find it, and drive to a familiar parking lot in downtown Indianapolis.

Her dark blue Ford Mustang Fastback sticks out like a sore thumb among the caboodles littering the spaces. The one crappy car she's looking for isn't there though, so she spreads herself out over the front seats, the car gear shift poking into her back but that's how she needs it nowadays. With her feet propped out of the open window and the radio gently humming indie rock, she finally falls asleep.

* * *

A car. A dark blue Ford Mustang Fastback stands taunting between near-wrecks of rides, daring everyone—anyone to say something. Alex tries to remember when this became a habit but comes up blank. She decides not to think, then, not yet. Instead she peels out of her car and walks over to Nikita's.

Her feet hang out of the window and she tickles the soles to wake her up.

If she doesn't… If she wakes her up any other way than with a smile on her face, her nose scrunched up and a giggle on her tongue their encounters are nothing short of disastrous. There's stories and they're horrible. Nothing about colors like when they curl up together naked after sex, nothing about playing soccer near the field hospital, nothing about saving innocent kids and roasting the world's most horrible marshmallows above a cooking fire.

No, if she wakes up Nikita any other way it's all about the raid that took away Emily, or the fight that killed Owen, or the explosion that wiped out half of her platoon, including her cousin, Daniel and her best friend since childhood, Birkhoff. There are stories about the terrifying crack of her collar bone breaking when she had been kept hostage for a week, and holding Sean until he bled out completely in her lap.

There are questions, too. About when Alex went off to college and came back four months later pregnant from her rapist, about miscarriage and feeling her mother's wrath for being the reason Michael decided to stay home rather than take the job offer he got from Washington.

So waking Nikita up with a smile is most rewarding, and not because that's the only way she gets sex. It's the only way they really work: a mutual understanding that they've seen things that haunt them and the mutual need for an escape.

She should probably feel really guilty about that, but she figured out weeks ago that she needs Nikita more than she wants Michael to be happy—that makes her either horrible or really fucking in love.

(Probably both.)

Alex slides into the back seat of the car and Nikita follows shortly after, cuddling up to her side. Her eyes are closed again, but she's smiling, and that's something. She loves Nikita's smile because it's like a gem: rarely found but the most special thing.

"Did you sleep well?" Alex asks, burying her face into dark hair that smells like pomegranate, moving a finger across the place where sometimes a golden band forces them back to reality just for a moment.

Nikita hums, leans in to press her lips to Alex' so she knows; no small talk today.

And Alex is happy to oblige. She eagerly pins the older woman into the fabric of the seat, takes her sweet time biting bruises into the intercostal spaces, worships her body with her eyes _and_ her hands. Nothing is rushed because they take their time, slow and deliberate—they _need _their time. Nikita needs it almost more than Alex does.

The younger girl knows because she pays close attention. She's become the expert of navigating through the maze of traumatic experiences that shape Nikita right now.

And maybe Nikita needs help. Maybe they _both _need help—Nikita walks the maze of Alex' traumas every day. Maybe they do.

But if so: not yet. They can kiss the scar tissue to silence for a little longer.


End file.
